The great endgame

As the bigwigs hold forth in Kabul, Afghanistan’s future still looks uncertain

THE themes discussed at this week's international conference on Afghanistan were grimly familiar. Those attending could be forgiven for pinching themselves to remember whether they had heard all this before in London in January, or in Tokyo, or Paris, or in any of the nine cities where, over the past decade, foreign ministers have met to chew over Afghanistan's precarious fate.

Sitting around a huge table in the Afghan foreign ministry, the 68 delegates were each allotted five minutes to say what mattered to them. Some wanted progress on tackling corruption or on spending foreign aid more effectively; others sought stronger government or more training for the Afghan National Army. But with the exception of the Iranian foreign minister, who went amusingly (and at length) off message with a rant about international forces as the cause of rising insecurity, the delegates said little to set the pulse racing.

In fact, the only novelty of the smoothly run conference on July 20th was that it was the first to be held in Afghanistan itself (thankfully, the Taliban failed to disrupt it). The idea was that this would prove how, nine years after the West invaded, the government is successfully bringing about Afghanistan's “transition” into a country that can look after itself.

That day cannot come soon enough for most who sat around the big table, as they struggle to justify the expense in blood and treasure to their people back home. Britain's government has spoken ever more emphatically in recent days, amid a sharp increase in British casualties, of ending combat operations in Afghanistan within a few years. Hillary Clinton, America's secretary of state, described how “citizens of many nations represented here, including my own, wonder whether success is even possible—and if so, whether we all have the commitment to achieve it.”

Sadly for Afghanistan, the predominant view among diplomats and long-term observers of the country is that the counterinsurgency strategy will probably fail—and certainly do so if foreign powers have now decided not to take the time needed to build an Afghan state able to resist the insurgency and the nefarious activities of meddling neighbours. A sense of gloom was evident in some quarters. A European diplomat dismissed the country as a problem only for its region, adding that “I can't think of a single reason to die for Afghanistan.”

With such thoughts in mind, most of the speeches seemed surreally beside the point. Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's troublesome president, gave by far the most surprising. In some ways it was the talk that his many critics have waited six years to hear. He said brightly that the country's minerals (which have been absurdly hyped in recent months) could be worth trillions and so could “make state building affordable”. He said he hoped the country could become “the Asian Roundabout” for trade on “the new Silk Road” with “a dynamic service sector”. Old civil servants would be pensioned off, young thrusters recruited. Corrupt officials would be swiftly prosecuted. He called for long-term development, not a “quick impact” approach favoured by foreigners.

As Martine van Bijlert, a former diplomat now at the Afghanistan Analysts Network, put it, “it was a speech written for a country without a war.” Perhaps Mr Karzai got Ashraf Ghani, the conference organiser, to write it. Mr Ghani, a former World Bank official, ran against Mr Karzai last year, excoriating the Afghan president's record on corruption and the fraud that came after the election. But now he “calls Karzai ‘Your Excellency' 30 times a day”, says one sarcastic Afghan political analyst.

An optimist would say that Mr Karzai is right to focus on the long term. Nearly half a century after they first started discussing it, the Afghan and Pakistani governments this week struck a trade deal, which will in theory give Afghan producers better access to India's vast consumer market—though trade between India and Pakistan is almost non-existent. And the United States, after nine wasted years, is making more serious efforts at state-building, particularly in improving the army and police.

The hope is that they will be good enough by 2014 gradually to take the lead in security operations, as laid out in the final conference communiqué. Even then, the foreigners' duties will not end. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO secretary-general, argued: “When it happens, international forces won't leave. They will simply move into a supporting role.” That jars with others' attempting to put a time-limit on the troops' presence.

Worse, the growing band of Afghanistan pessimists fears the national army, with so many illiterate and drug-addled recruits, will never be able to subdue the south of the country. They point to the extreme difficulty the army has in recruiting southern Pushtuns, whose families face certain death if insurgents discover their sons are serving. It seems unlikely that the Afghan government will grow strong enough to dictate terms to the Taliban.

Afghanistan policy experts have moved beyond state-building and counterinsurgency. They think the only thing that will create enough stability to allow foreign troops to leave with any honour is a deal with the Taliban, perhaps even a de facto partition that cedes control of the Pushtun south.

“Reconciliation” with insurgent leaders was barely mentioned, either by Mr Karzai or in the communiqué. He stuck to an American-approved line: there will only be deals for insurgents who are “willing to accept the constitution and renounce ties to al-Qaeda's network”. Such talk rings hollow as long as the Taliban continue to defy American efforts to pacify even a small and rural community like Marja in Helmand province.

The most hard-nosed realists, including some diplomats sitting in the shadows behind their ministerial bosses, say that painful compromises will have to be made, particularly on women's rights (which Mrs Clinton made a point of insisting would not be sacrificed). Francesc Vendrell, for example, a former UN and EU envoy to Kabul, wearily suggests that direct elections of provincial governors may be introduced as a mechanism by which the south is handed over to the Taliban and the north to Uzbek, Hazara and Tajik warlords. That would be less a matter of divide and rule than a strategy of divide and go.